Ixiv INTRODUCTION. 



left Mr. Smith to pursue alone his researches, in the moun- 

 tains of Tellemarck, where he discovered a great number of 

 mosses, and other new plants, which gained him celebrity 

 among all the botanists of the North. In 1812 he made a se- 

 cond excursion across the mountains of Tellemarck and Hal- 

 lingdal, which were but little known, even to the natives of 

 Norway ; he ascertained their heights, examined their pro- 

 ductions, made a numberof curious meteorological observa- 

 tions, and, in short, traversed those solitary regions not only 

 as a botanist, but as a natural philosopher ; and the narra- 

 tive which he has given of his proceedings, to use the words 

 of his friend Von Buch, " will alwa3's be considered as one 

 of the most curious and instructive documents of physical 

 geography." He has therein exemplified and explained the 

 immense influence of the proximity of the sea, and the sur- 

 prising difference, resulting from it, between the tempera- 

 ture of the interior of the continent, and of the coast, and its 

 effects on the different products of the vegetable world ; the 

 limits of perpetual snow on the sides of different moun- 

 tains, and a great variety of interesting facts, connected 

 with the geography and physiology of plants. 

 . The Patriotic Society of Norway, struck Avith the zeal 

 and indefatigable industry of Mr. Smith, engaged him at 

 its own expense to undertake another scientific expedition 

 into the clusters of mountains, which, about the 62'"' pa- 

 rallel of latitude, separate the valleys of Walders, of Guld- 

 transdal, and of Romsdal, whose height and extent were 

 unknown, and many parts of them untrod even by the 

 hunters of the rein deer. B3' this excursion the Norwegian 

 Flora was greatly extended, and from it the geography of 

 plants acquired fresh facts at once exceedingly curious and 



